Mark D’Arcy, Facebook Creative Shop CCO, Speaks About Creativity

Mark D’Arcy, New Zealand born VP and chief creative officer of Facebook Creative Shop, was interviewed by Campaign about the ways new technology has aligned creativity and business.

“We grew up with linear forms of entertainment; there were only a finite number of things we were watching,” D’Arcy said. “You would watch something once, you could never revisit it. Today, that is not the case. We will soon be able to put reusable content in the hands of everyone.”

The connections the Internet has opened creates new competition for consumer attention, D’Arcy said, and as technology evolves this competition will only increase.

That means creative people must act as guides in this new media landscape. “No matter how powerful any technology is, I believe that creativity is the key to unlocking that technology,” he said.

D’Arcy advised agencies to build “creative capital.”

“Creativity is not some abstract form of crayon drawing,” he said. “The more time I’ve spent with technology, the more I’ve realized that technology is aligned with creativity, and technology is enabling new kinds of creativity.”

D’Arcy said marketers can no longer assume their work will capture consumers’ attention disruptively.

“It is far more valuable to stop what we’re doing and think about marketing as the manifestation of purpose – where we connect to people with things of value to them. We’re moving from disruption to connection.

“If we look at marketing as the manifestation of service and brand purpose, we go from marketing ‘at’ people to marketing ‘for’ people. That changes everything.

“We need to build experiences in a way that respects people’s time,” D’Arcy said.

Mark D’Arcy grew up in New Zealand and studied marketing and advertising at AUT University in Auckland.

Original story by Umaire Effendi, Campaign, 4 November 2014

Photo credit: Facebook